Positives:
- Flying V is better out the gate than i thought he'd be and he's getting better every game
- Ross seems to finally be settling down and getting confidence. He's shown real potential at both ends of the floor
- Lowry is awesome
- Amir AND Ed have stepped their game up this year
- Calderon is playing the best ball of his career
- Demar is making all of us eat our words. I couldn't be happier. He's rebounding, shooting better from 3, has handles and i swear ive seen him make some beautiful assists. He's blowing me away.

There are 2 things that are going to happen. Either Bargnani gets traded or BC gets fired and Ed Stafanski trades Bargnani. Either way Bargnani is going to be traded no matter what. It's time for a change

If someone had said at the start of the season that JV would have 3 Double Doubles by game 12, averaging just 20 minutes a game, or that in games 10, 11, and 12 he would have averaged 9 rb and 11 pts I would have bet money against them. But there you are.

By mid-season Casey could actually be running plays for him. More than happy about that.

Lowry has been all that he was advertised to be, and more.

DeMar is playing better than expected, IMO, and no reason to believe that will change. Now, if only Fields corrected medical problem allows him to find his shot...It would be nice to have his D on the floor, but McGuire has been a surprise as well. Even showing a little ofence.

Extremely frustrated about coming so close to winning only to see the games slip out of reach. Still looking forward to the rest of the season.

If someone had said at the start of the season that JV would have 3 Double Doubles by game 12, averaging just 20 minutes a game, or that in games 10, 11, and 12 he would have averaged 9 rb and 11 pts I would have bet money against them. But there you are.

By mid-season Casey could actually be running plays for him. More than happy about that.

Lowry has been all that he was advertised to be, and more.

DeMar is playing better than expected, IMO, and no reason to believe that will change. Now, if only Fields corrected medical problem allows him to find his shot...It would be nice to have his D on the floor, but McGuire has been a surprise as well. Even showing a little ofence.

Extremely frustrated about coming so close to winning only to see the games slip out of reach. Still looking forward to the rest of the season.

This team has performed better than I expected so far. I didn't have them down for their 3rd win until the game against Detroit on Friday. If we win that one we'll be twice as good as I thought!

++++1
It's fine to say that the sky is falling at 3-9 but prior to each game, how many did you think we would win that we didn't? Last night may have seemed like one but those were not the 7 win bobcats, they were the >.500 bobcats. Almost a full quarter of our losses (small sample size excitement!) were the results of a final shot bouncing around the rim before falling in. Lots of close games but we can't close out fourth quarters? More than half of our starting line up have never played together before. It's going to take some time before they have the cohesion to close things out. So, yes, take a deep breath. But break out your steel umbrellas if we lose to Detroit**

** there we go..that's part of the problem. Here I am thinking that we are vastly superior to a team that has one less win than us. A team that started the season with seven games against the west. A team that beat the Celtics and sixers. I take back my optimism

++++1
It's fine to say that the sky is falling at 3-9 but prior to each game, how many did you think we would win that we didn't? Last night may have seemed like one but those were not the 7 win bobcats, they were the >.500 bobcats. Almost a full quarter of our losses (small sample size excitement!) were the results of a final shot bouncing around the rim before falling in. Lots of close games but we can't close out fourth quarters? More than half of our starting line up have never played together before. It's going to take some time before they have the cohesion to close things out. So, yes, take a deep breath. But break out your steel umbrellas if we lose to Detroit**

** there we go..that's part of the problem. Here I am thinking that we are vastly superior to a team that has one less win than us. A team that started the season with seven games against the west. A team that beat the Celtics and sixers. I take back my optimism

that is also a kick in the nuts.

The bad teams are improving at a faster rate than Toronto. Dunlap deserves all kinds of credit for motivating that team. There is no doubt he has them overachieving. But at the same time he has definitely got the team buying in to the plan. Wait a second, that sounds familiar...... from last year.

Bargnani has such a special skill set for a guy his size. We just have to harness his potential, and with a little more time, and a few breaks our way, Andrea Bargnani can be the focal point of a Championship offense in the NBA.

Everyone here has to forget this negativity, and just have faith that Bryan Colangelo has a fantastic conception of this team's potential, and its direction. We are slowly, but surely, building towards greatness here. People are panicing way to early right now.

What guys, I mean, we're only like 12 games in here. Sure, things aren't going as well as expected. There have been injuries during the last two years, but we are trending in a very positive direction.

DeRozan, Bargnani, Kleiza, Fields, Amir Johnson... These are great blue collar, lunch pail type of players, who are just such a solid core to build around.

With Lowry, Valanciunas, Ed Davis, and T. Ross, we have budding HOF'ers who are going to push this roster into contention.

Just stay positive you guys... This is a very well managed team, with some great pieces at bargain contracts. Every team short of the Heat and the Lakers are jealous of the Raps you can bet that!!

Bargnani has such a special skill set for a guy his size. We just have to harness his potential, and with a little more time, and a few breaks our way, Andrea Bargnani can be the focal point of a Championship offense in the NBA.

Everyone here has to forget this negativity, and just have faith that Bryan Colangelo has a fantastic conception of this team's potential, and its direction. We are slowly, but surely, building towards greatness here. People are panicing way to early right now.

What guys, I mean, we're only like 12 games in here. Sure, things aren't going as well as expected. There have been injuries during the last two years, but we are trending in a very positive direction.

DeRozan, Bargnani, Kleiza, Fields, Amir Johnson... These are great blue collar, lunch pail type of players, who are just such a solid core to build around.

With Lowry, Valanciunas, Ed Davis, and T. Ross, we have budding HOF'ers who are going to push this roster into contention.

Just stay positive you guys... This is a very well managed team, with some great pieces at bargain contracts. Every team short of the Heat and the Lakers are jealous of the Raps you can bet that!!

Go RapS!

3rd time i read this in three different threads. please stop wasting my time. i assume your trolling or trying to come off sarcastic but i got it the first time

The bad teams are improving at a faster rate than Toronto. Dunlap deserves all kinds of credit for motivating that team. There is no doubt he has them overachieving. But at the same time he has definitely got the team buying in to the plan. Wait a second, that sounds familiar...... from last year.

But isn't that what was expected? That was 75% of my argument against drafting JV. If you sided with drafting JV, then you were also willing to wait 2+ years (not to mention the risk involved) to catch up to the other bad teams of 2011. This is the point of NBA Drafts. You get a player because you sucked, and you develop him, and hope he helps you out in the long run. We didn't have a player to develop last year because our guy was in Europe not learning how to play in the NBA. Charlotte had two, and now they're a much, much better team. While they sucked last season, at least they were making progress. We sucked last year, and then we're going to suck again this year, and start making progress this year. While their two rookies learned how to play in the NBA and gained valuable experience, ours did nothing of the sort. Ours will start learning now, while theirs continue to grow into solid NBA players; learn what it takes to win; hit game winning shots, etc.

We can look back a few years from now and laugh at this debate if JV is dominating and we're a winning team, but if you're complaining about the slow progress of this team, that's just silly.

But isn't that what was expected? That was 75% of my argument against drafting JV. If you sided with drafting JV, then you were also willing to wait 2+ years (not to mention the risk involved) to catch up to the other bad teams of 2011. This is the point of NBA Drafts. You get a player because you sucked, and you develop him, and hope he helps you out in the long run. We didn't have a player to develop last year because our guy was in Europe not learning how to play in the NBA. Charlotte had two, and now they're a much, much better team. While they sucked last season, at least they were making progress. We sucked last year, and then we're going to suck again this year, and start making progress this year. While their two rookies learned how to play in the NBA and gained valuable experience, ours did nothing of the sort. Ours will start learning now, while theirs continue to grow into solid NBA players; learn what it takes to win; hit game winning shots, etc.

We can look back a few years from now and laugh at this debate if JV is dominating and we're a winning team, but if you're complaining about the slow progress of this team, that's just silly.

The problem in Toronto this season is not JV. It is everyone else (as a whole including coaching) - they have regressed. The Raptors have young veterans who are not getting it done and a 2nd year coach who has not built on the progress of his 1st year.

Bargnani has such a special skill set for a guy his size. We just have to harness his potential, and with a little more time, and a few breaks our way, Andrea Bargnani can be the focal point of a Championship offense in the NBA.

Everyone here has to forget this negativity, and just have faith that Bryan Colangelo has a fantastic conception of this team's potential, and its direction. We are slowly, but surely, building towards greatness here. People are panicing way to early right now.

What guys, I mean, we're only like 12 games in here. Sure, things aren't going as well as expected. There have been injuries during the last two years, but we are trending in a very positive direction.

DeRozan, Bargnani, Kleiza, Fields, Amir Johnson... These are great blue collar, lunch pail type of players, who are just such a solid core to build around.

With Lowry, Valanciunas, Ed Davis, and T. Ross, we have budding HOF'ers who are going to push this roster into contention.

Just stay positive you guys... This is a very well managed team, with some great pieces at bargain contracts. Every team short of the Heat and the Lakers are jealous of the Raps you can bet that!!

The problem in Toronto this season is not JV. It is everyone else (as a whole including coaching) - they have regressed. The Raptors have young veterans who are not getting it done and a 2nd year coach who has not built on the progress of his 1st year.

I agree, JV is not the problem now -- what I'm saying is that the delayed improvement was expected. And I kind of see a domino-effect from that; the day the management made the choice of writing off an entire season and doing nothing to the roster for one full year.

We literally went into the 2011-2012 season having done close to nothing in the offseason, coming into the season with virtually the exact same roster as the year before (give or take a few end-of-bench players). We brought in a brand new coach to change the culture and mentality, but we failed to look at the big picture, because they were teaching a culture to a bunch of players who had no future as Raptors.

They taught guys to "pound the rock", but Barbosa, Bayless, James Johnson, Jamaal Magloire are no longer with us. A couple more -- Calderon and Bargnani have no future with this team.

So really the only guy who retains the experience and knowledge of Casey's system and culture is DeMar DeRozan. If you look at the future of this team (when JV reaches his potential in 2-3 years), our lineup will consist of Lowry, DeRozan and Valanciunas. Ed Davis and Terrence Ross -- maybe, if they survive the inevitable trades to come. Kleiza and Amir might still be around by virtue of bad contracts that no one will want to touch until they're expiring.

To sum it up, basically the roster is changing faster than the culture can change, and that's why you see a regression from last year to this year.